E3: Spore

3:32: Will Wright, of Maxis, walks on stage. His talk begins with his chemistry set. It’s a good introduction the theme of the short speech: It’s about games being a pathway to science.

“I dreamed of having a secret scientist laboratory,” he says. “Science and creativity is a really fertile intersection. I want spore to create this space between science and creativity.”

When Maxis released the Spore Creature Creator, they were expecting players to go wild, but they never expected them to be this amazing. The results have been quite surprising.

“We wanted to release it early because the creative power of players is awe inspiring,” Wright says. “We released the creature creator first and thought that the game would be populated by creatures folks have already made.”

At first, they thought it would take them three months for players to create a million creatures. Instead, the popularity of the creator took off and folks made that many creatures in one week. It took 18 days to exceed the number of creatures on earth.

When you think about it, it took God seven days to do that. For Spore players, it took about two and a half weeks. The results: Wright says Spore Fans = 38 percent God. Maxis now uses that number as a measuring stick. 1 G = 1.5 million species.

They plan on having up to 3Gs by January. Wright then showed some of the wackier creations such as robots, items, etc.

After showing all those creatures, Wright ended up talking about the prototype program, where fans can mess with some of the code and look at the gravity on planets and other things. Later, he mentioned the National Geographic Channel special that will coincidentally appear in the Galactic Edition.

To sum up his point, Wright says that “The creativity angle is the front door for the science.” Judging by how players of all stripes have taken to the Spore Creature Creator, I figure he’s probably right.

And folks can begin experimenting and learning about science when the game comes out Sept. 7.